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Saturday, March 21, 2015

What is a Teacher Ninja?

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Ninjas are specialized warriors trained to be masters of combat. A ninja works extremely hard driven by beliefs and principals of the ninja way.

A teacher ninja is a specialized warrior in the field of education. A teacher ninja works extremely hard, driven by beliefs and ideals of….well, that part is a bit muddled. At one time all teacher ninjas were driven by the belief of making a difference in the lives of young people. Excited to shape and mold minds. Using creativity to motivate and engage our students to learn.

Today the teacher ninja is expected to operate under the ideals and philosophies of law and policy makers who haven’t spent a day teaching in the classroom. It’s easy to forget what motivated us in the beginning to become teachers. We’re drowning in state mandates. We tread to keep our heads above all of the paper work and other requirements.

Fear not great teacher ninja warriors. We’ll examine the ninja way and connect it back to our lives as educators.

Way #1

Adopt a Sense of Teaching Beliefs

Imagine you woke up tomorrow and all the mandates and tests were lifted. What would a day in your classroom look like? For me, the children would have a say in what interests them. We could spend days on a topic, read books and talk about them. Stop and research questions that arise.

My belief has and will always be that children need to be invested in their own learning. This year my teacher ninja surfaced. The standards and testing has not gone away. In fact, this is the year the new testing is to implemented. I refuse to let it control me. I made the decision to fall back on my beliefs.

My children write stories of their choice. They write every day and request publishing days frequently. They go through the writing process, publish their stories, create covers, and read their masterpieces to the class. Their stories are part of our classroom library to be checked out by other students to read.

This is just a glimpse into my day. My point? My children are excited about writing. This is not to say I don’t teach the mechanics of writing and types of writing. I do. This particular class is motivated by story writing, so that drives my planning. I carve time out of my schedule for it. Should I be doing more test practice? Maybe. The teacher ninja in me doesn’t believe so. I can live with that.

What is your teacher ninja saying to you? Listen to the ninja. After all a ninja is a specialized trained expert in the field.